Monday morning. It's just like any other.
The sound of your alarm rudely awakens
you from your slumber, spiking your blood
pressure, and accelerating your heart
rate. You soon find your hands reaching
for that all-too-familiar snooze button,
and after repeated presses you roll
yourself out of bed, and tell yourself
that "this will be the day that I'm
productive". It's nearing exam season, and
you've formulated the perfect study plan.
You sit down on your desk and open your
notes, but after staring at the screen
for a few minutes you think to yourself
that revising the function of all these
gastrointestinal hormones doesn't seem
very appealing. You just don't feel like
it. Instead you open up Netflix and tell
yourself you'll start at 10 o'clock. 10
o'clock turns into 11 and 12 which is
pushed back to after lunch and before
you know it the clock reads 5:00 p.m.
and you look down to see that you've
watched an entire season of Big Bang
Theory. Hey guys, welcome back to the
channel if you're new here I'm Sebastian
a medical student from Australia and
this is probably a situation that you
might have found yourself in because
this has certainly happened to me more
than I would hoped especially the bit
about binging on Big Bang Theory. We want
nothing more than a productive study day
but as our girl Taylor Swift would say
"just because you made a good plan
doesn't mean that's what's gonna happen".
Instead it comes down to that inner
feeling, that inner drive to want to get
things done. To work on that assignment,
to prepare for that upcoming exam, or to
write that essay. That inner feeling can
come from a nagging parent, it can come
from a narrowing due date, but ultimately
it needs to come from you. A few weeks
ago I finished my mid-year exam and we had
to do a lot of study to prepare for it.
It was covering a lot of concepts and
there was more than 150 lectures and
seminars to be tested on so I needed a
good study schedule, a good study routine
in the weeks leading up to the exam. And
so in this video I'll be sharing with
you my study routine how I stuck to it
and some ideas and concepts that help me
stay motivated and also help me give me
that inner drive to actually want to get
things done before we begin I just want
to quickly say that this is by no means
a comprehensive workbook you don't have
to follow to my schedule like a strict
routine all I want out of this is for
you to take away some principles some
ideas that hopefully apply to your own
framework to your own study schedules to
whatever works
but any study routine it needs to be
personalized and after doing a lot of
trial and error with my studies in first
year medical school I found out that
there were specific times in the day
where I was more productive or less
productive more active or just
completely dead and couldn't get
anything through to my brain and I found
that these times were early in the
morning so early in the morning I was
really alive I was really ready to learn
and also after dinner so using that
knowledge that these are the times that
are most productive I decided to make
sure that I was utilizing those times
and effectively that I was studying or
at least contributing to an assignment
or to a project so when it came to
following my study routine I tried to
formulate it around these times I'd work
really hard from when I woke up usually
about 8 a.m. and I'd work from about
8:30 to lunchtime and that 3 to 4 hour
block would be a big chunk of what I did
every day then I'd have lunch and then
I've moved to the small light revision
in the early afternoon and then when I
hit about 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. that
period I get that afternoon low I can't
really think straight nothing's really
going through I kind of want a nap and
I'm not gonna lie to you some days I'd
have a little bit of a power nap but I'd
also spend this time to try just relax
have a break watching TV and then after
dinner from that about 7:00 to 9:00
period 6:00 to 9:00 period that was
another time when I was really super
energized and I wanted to get a lot of
things done so I made sure that I would
go over questions I do practice stuff
because at the end of the night I would
make sure that I was loaded with all
this information so that I can sleep on
it and hopefully retain more when I woke
up I recently finished a book called why
we sleep by Matthew Walker and he talks
about the principles of memory retention
through sleep how when you sleep you're
actually moving short-term memory from
your hippocampus and n-terminal cortex
to high centers in the brain for
long-term memory storage so to sum it up
on the screen here I would do two study
sessions one in the morning and one in
the evening and I would do some light
revisions and like maybe on key cards
that sort of thing throughout the day
and making sure that I was taking breaks
when I was feeling really tired but
working hard when I was most energized
okay so we just talked about the
structure of my study day but how do I
actually stay motivated and want to
learn things so the beginning of this
year I wanted to get into really good
habits I wanted to start doing things
every day unconsciously and these were
things like doing a minimum amount of
study per day finishing my Anki cards
doing some exercise and so when I began
I started setting daily goals these were
just things that I written down as a
reminders of what I wanted to do what I
wanted to accomplish throughout the day
what was super useful for me was
downloading this app called done and
basically it's a habit tracker app where
you can put this list of things that you
want to do these daily objectives and by
making an active effort of taking them
off of seeing my progress every day and
like you would on a snapchat streak I
started seeing my daily shrieks that I
do something eight days in a row that I
made sure that I finished my Anki cards
for two weeks straight without a break
and it started making my study schedule
more gamer fight like I wanted to go out
and actually complete these tasks to
make sure that I maintain my streak but
also just the good feeling of I'm on a
roll this is becoming part of me and
what happened is that I no longer looked
at studying and completing tasks as a
chore as something that I just had to do
to pass an exam but instead what
happened is that I started forming more
of an identity and analogy I give is
there things like the things you pick up
when learning to drive at first you'll
make a mental note like you would your
daily goal of doing your head check of
making sure you're indicating before you
turn lands but eventually you're not
even thinking about anymore it's just
what you do it's automatic and so these
daily goals then become automatic and
then become habits which form part of
your identity task habit identity if you
learn to love the process then acquiring
the skills or the knowledge will come
easy you'll just become second nature
the primary thing will actually be going
out and doing it and I think with any
skill or with any task trying to learn
70% of it comes from the motivation the
inner one to actually get it done and so
doing these daily streaks and starting
to to form these identities about who
you are and why you like doing the
things you're doing I think that will
really help when sticking to any study
schedule there was this corny little
quote that my dad used to always tell me
growing up and it stuck with me to this
day and he's
how do you eat an elephant one bite at a
time I just told you that in order to
form these habits you need to be doing
them daily but sometimes things will pop
up in our life that we can't control and
we just don't have the time to complete
everything on our habit list so what do
we do and I think a good rule to follow
is the 2-day rule and the rule is simple
you cannot miss completing a task two
days in a row in other words if you
forget to do your exercise or forget to
finish your daily on key cards make sure
that you do it the next day and don't
miss two days in a row you have to
remind yourself that it's okay to take
some time off but if you get out of your
groove if you get out of this
consistency mindset what will happen is
that two days of not exercising or not
studying will become three days and soon
you'll forget about your whole routine
in the first place and so following to
this two day rule at least gives you
some flexibility to take some days off
but at the same time make sure that you
keep this momentum and keep forming
these habits environment Trump's
motivation sometimes we forget how truly
important our environment is in shaping
our behaviour and shaping what we do by
creating an ideal study environment
you're reducing the friction to actually
get started
you're making sure that you have no
distractors and you're streamlining your
study so that it's easy to do make sure
that your desk is clear that on your
computer you don't have video games to
distract you or you create a study space
where you go in and you know in your
head you're telling your brain that I'm
gonna work now an example to think about
is just eating habits when you have a
fruit bowl in the middle of your table
you're more likely to pick up an apple
or a banana and eat it on the way to
work on the way to school if you make it
easy to study and just start then you're
more likely to keep going and gain that
momentum so you don't stop find an
accountability group so when you're
forming a study schedule this is a very
individual thing
but when it comes to acquiring knowledge
and applying it in practice you need
some people to teach and some people to
learn from so having a group of friends
that you can bounce ideas off of that
you can go to for help that they can
check up on you to make sure that you're
sticking to your study schedule that is
a really helpful thing to have it also
gives you a chance to teach someone and
the Fineman technique sort of revolves
around this idea
when you learn a concept you teach
someone else and then you go back and
make sure that whatever you're weak on
or that you couldn't teach effectively
you'll revise it and then you try to
teach it again and for me I have a few
friends that are chatty on a zoom call
at the end of every week and we'll talk
about medicine we'll talk about just
life and how things are going we'll
update each other on what's going on in
our lives we might do a little bit of
group study why it's so helpful is that
make sure that I know where everybody
else is going in terms of the semester
are they finding the content hard easy I
can compare with how they're feeling and
then how I'm feeling so having a group
of friends to hold each other
accountable will push you harder make
sure that you're working and you can
build each other up along the way just
remember that at the end of the day
everybody studies differently some
people will study 12 hours a day
others will study two hours a day and
still do really well in the exam what
matters is that you find out what works
for you and hopefully some of the
principles that I've talked about you
can employ them into your own study
routine and maybe they can give you a
little bit of extra motivation when
forming new habits or when learning new
things if you enjoyed the video remember
to hit that like button and subscribe to
see more content like this I love to
hear some of your own study schedules if
it's the same as mine or different to
mine let me know in the comments below
I'd love to hear them but thanks so much
for watching and until next time this
was Sebastian
stay sharp
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